The present invention relates to surgical apparatus and pertains particularly to apparatus for cooling organs during surgery.
It is desirable at times to either heat or cool portions of the human body for either changing or maintaining the portion at a particular temperature. For example, the body or portions of the body are sometimes cooled during surgery. This reduces the oxygen requirements of the body portion during surgery. Local hypothermia is known in the art and many devices for the application of local hypothermia are known. However, most such devices are bulky and inconvenient to use. Many such devices are also complicated and require the enclosure and attendant fastening and unfastening of the apparatus which takes time and complicates procedures.
It is desirable that some simple and convenient device be available which can be used to quickly and conveniently enclose substantial portions of an organ such as a heart during surgery and to insulate it from other portions of the body.